Interview with Erika

V: What are you going to be presenting at this exhibition? E: It’s going to be 5 different individual video works I made the past 3 years, an overview of my practice up to now.

V: What kind of films are they? E:It’s difficult to categorise my videos. There will be different film formats presented, very short ones, and some longer ones that are maybe closer to the feature film format. There is different influences in my work and different use the medium; some are closer to observational documentary and some are totally performative.

In all of them, there is a play and a reflexion on our reality and the performance on a screen.

V: So this is going to be a mini retrospective? Yes, exactly it’s going to be a mini retrospective of my practice, an overview of my work. I had the chance to show what I wanted, in the way I wanted.

V: It’s the first time you bring these works together, right? Do you think that this exhibition is site specific? The site was very important to take certain decisions regarding the display of the videos, but the exhibition is not site specific. The site is not part of the work.

V: It’s the first time the work will be together? Yes

V: Why do you want to put them together? What do you hope it will communicate to an audience by placing them all together? E: Of course all my videos shares certain features and shows a recurring interest is similarities but there is also different ways to experience the videos. Putting them together is the opportunity for me to place share my interests, and I think to show the playfulness of my practice. I hope that the audience will get a glance of my world, as my videos are very intimate. My position also through each videos is changing, being a silent observer, an active partipant, a main character, etc…

V: So there is a specific ways you would like visitors to see the work? It’s not like putting them on a website. E: For my works and video in general, I believe that the presentation has to be very thought through. Sometimes, watching it on a computer screen is really not working, and sometimes it’s the best way to do it. This exhibition will allow a different kind of experience, and it was a way to sense the different subtleties. The attention of the audience is very fragile, and you need to have the best conditions for it, even more with my work which is a lot about the nothingness and language.

V: Do you think bringing them together will bring certain treads together certain. I

V: So…Do you think about a certain kind of audience will be interested? Do you think it will attract certain people. E: I think that my work is quite accessible, I don’t think that my language i complicated. I think that I am asking patience and concentration from my audience so not everybody enjoy my work but it doesn’t really has to do with education, or social class, etc…

V: Why do you feel sort of driven to work with certain themes? E: I think the question of identity and self representation comes a lot. Like how people perceive themselves and how they are ready to share it with the audience and me. I consider my camera as a tool to meet people> Most of the time the act of filming someone creates a barrier with between the filmmaker and its subject but in my case, because people are close enough and trust me this barrier is easily overcome. It has always been a way to share and collaborate on a project with my subjecgts. Like the video with my father for example.

V: Why do you feel the task is there something very personal? Is there an art historical drive right? Or is it impulsive, a will to share something with the audience? Maybe a better question, do you have references? Other artists you are interested

Lastly, I am really interested in the different ways of making documentaries, I am reading the book from Stella Bruzzi, The New Documentary.

V: Ok, what are your plans after this exhibitions? Do you hope that this exhibition will give you some closure? It could be an opportunity to see how people experience my work, each videos is an different experience.

Is there anything that you would like to communicate to the audience. What I want to communicate would be the beauty the small moments of life… Through making, and playing between fiction and reality, involving people around me I realised how performing can reveal about someone’s identity, when you work with someone and if they trust you they can share a lot without even being aware of it. And I want to share this, and also the poetic of these small moments and the importance of when nothing happen.

Maybe the last question now. Are these work, do you think that it comes out of your life, of your history. Is it somehow autobiographical. Intimate but I wouldn’t say its autobiographical, it doesn’t give any information about me in an autobiographical way. Even when I film someone, I don’t give any informations about that person. I show characters, but there is no biographical informations or very few. I think it’s the same with me, I don’t share any biographical experience, only the experience in the act of making but what you see on in each video is a small detail, a selected moment on my subject’s life and on my own.

So why do you make art? No, not this question.